Betsy and the Great World / Betsy's Wedding Page 4

  She knew all her good points—or thought she did. (She never included her smile, unaware that it was quick and very bright.) She valued highly her slender figure, pink and white skin, and red lips.

  She was even more conscious of her defects—straight hair, irregular features, the space between her teeth in front. But she did not brood upon them as she had in her teens.

  Like most girls she had worked out a technique for fascination. With Betsy it was thoroughly curled hair, perfume, bracelets, the color green, immaculate daintiness, and a languid enigmatic pose. This last was less successful than she realized. People were likely to think of her as full of fun, friendly, and responsive. And her friends knew that she was doggedly persistent—anything but languid.

  Betsy was strong in her faith, however. Out in the corridor, after a cheerful good-by to Miss Wilson, she paused to assume the debutante slouch. Then she sauntered, with the swaying gait required by a hobble skirt, up to the dining saloon.

  “The Hungarian Rhapsody” came out to greet her. Cheeks flaming, she stood in the doorway and a steward beckoned to her. She found out then where Mr. O’Farrell had placed her. It was at his right.

  “I thought since you were all, all alone, I’d have you where I could look after you,” he said.

  He looked very worldly in his dress uniform, with its debonair short jacket. Betsy wondered how old he was. Pretty old. Thirty-five or so.

  “But I like older men. I wouldn’t mind marrying an older man,” she thought, wishing Joe could know what she was thinking. He and his mustache!

  Dr. Wilson was at the same table, asking for raw carrots, and an English lady, and a pallid young Bostonian named Mr. Glenn. Betsy was confused by all the strange accents. The missing r’s and the long soft a’s. Even Dr. Wilson was a New Englander, although he taught in Chicago.

  No one seemed to know much about the Middle West. The English lady had never even heard of Minneapolis. Mr. Glenn asked what state it was in, and Mr. O’Farrell questioned her about the Indians out there. But he, of course, was joking. He seemed to know everything.

  “He’s the most cosmopolitan person I ever met in my life,” Betsy thought.

  Speaking rapidly, his Irish brogue becoming more apparent as he warmed to the subject, he steered the conversation with easy skill so that everyone entered in.

  “Maybe some night you’ll tell us about those Indians,” he teased, lighting a cigarette. Having secured the ladies’ permission to smoke, he smoked continually.

  “I could tell you about Minnehaha Falls.”

  To her surprise everyone looked up with interest.

  “Really?” (It sounded like “rilly.”) The English lady leaned forward. “Have you actually seen the Minnehaha Falls?”

  “Of course. They’re in Minneapolis.”

  “How extr’ordinary!” A faraway smile lighted her plain face. “Do you know, we used to study it in school.

  “Where the Falls of Minnehaha

  Flash and gleam among the oak-trees…”

  Mr. Glenn’s face glowed. “That isn’t the part I remember. It’s…

  “By the shores of Gitche Gumee,

  By the shining Big-Sea-Water…”

  “I remember something else entirely,” Mr. O’Farrell said, his eyes laughing.

  “In the land of the Dacotahs

  Lives the Arrow-maker’s daughter

  Minnehaha, Laughing Water

  Handsomest of all the women…”

  “Let’s call Miss Ray, Minnehaha.”

  Betsy blushed.

  The dinner was in a multitude of courses, and the orchestra played alluringly through it all. For dessert they had little steamed puddings with a sweet hot sauce. Afterward there was coffee in tiny cups, nuts and raisins, biscuits with cheese. Mr. O’Farrell asked (in French) for a special kind of cheese. He had a genial but masterly way with the waiter.

  Betsy went down to her stateroom fairly dancing.

  “What luck to meet such a fascinating man! And won’t Tacy be pleased because he’s Irish?”

  She prepared for bed softly, not to disturb Miss Wilson, but she put her hair up on curlers tonight, tucking them carefully under her boudoir cap. Settled in her bunk, she wrote her letter home, telling her family about Mrs. Sims and Mrs. Cheney, about Taylor and Rosa and the girl with the long hair who wouldn’t speak. Lady Vere de Vere, Betsy dubbed her.

  “And now…‘Hearts and Flowers,’ please…our purser, Mr. O’Farrell, who looks like Chauncey Olcott.”

  Finishing her letter, she got out her Bible and Prayer Book. And finishing her prayers, she snuggled beneath the warm blankets. She looked at the porthole. It seemed cozy and not alarming tonight to think of the vast heaving blackness outside. She was so happy she could even think about Joe. Or rather, she could even not think about Joe.

  “‘And haply may forget,’” she murmured, flouncing beneath the blankets.

  For a day or two the sea was so rough that the decks were shut in by canvas. Betsy and Lady Vere de Vere were the only members of their sex at divine service on Sunday, and the weather made especially solemn the prayer For Persons Going to Sea.

  “O Eternal God, who alone spreadest out the heavens, and rulest the raging of the sea…” Betsy resolved to read that to herself every night during the voyage.

  Deck chairs were deserted, and dishes were clamped to the tables, but Betsy ate straight through the menu at every meal.

  “Say you were ill and just came to keep me from being bored,” Mr. O’Farrell implored her when she first appeared at breakfast.

  “Why, I’m not a bit ill!” Betsy began but he interrupted, his eyes dancing.

  “Oh, keep me in me fool’s paradise!”

  “I really must write Tacy about Mr. O’Farrell,” Betsy often chuckled to herself.

  She was thinking about him as she made her way to the bow on the fourth day out. The Columbic was still tossing, although buckets of sunshine seemed to have been thrown over the water, and the waves were merely frolicsome, not alarming, any more. She had paced the deck every day but had never gone this far front…

  “Front!” she checked herself scornfully. “I mean forward, on the starboard side!”

  Shocked by her inland ignorance, Mr. O’Farrell had been instructing her in nautical terms—bow and stern, port and starboard, forward, midships, aft. He had explained ship’s bells and the changing time.

  “The sun rises in the east and so, since we are going eastward, we gain time. Every noon the ship’s clocks are set correctly and you should set your watch correctly.”

  “I’ll remember, teacher.”

  “No frivolity, Miss! There’s a difference of five hours between New York and London.”

  “And I have to add two hours for Minneapolis!” Betsy grumbled. “I can’t even think what my family is doing without solving a problem in arithmetic first.”

  Mr. O’Farrell shook his handsome head. “You leave your family behind when you start out to travel,” he told her.

  Betsy was very happy. It was amazing, she thought, inching forward, how quickly one fell into this lazy routine: deck chairs, bouillon, promenading, luncheon, promenading, dressing for dinner, DINNER.

  “I feel as though I’d been born on this old ship!” she thought, reaching the bow at last.

  She clung to the railing in scared exhilaration and watched the Columbic plough its white furrow, until the spray drove her back. Presently the long-haired girl came up. Ignoring Betsy, she, too, looked out at the waves’ wild see-saw. But one exuberant wave leaped the railing. It spilled over Lady Vere de Vere, and Betsy could not help laughing.

  “I’m sorry,” she apologized as the blonde girl ruefully stood on one sopping foot to shake the other. “But that was funny.”

  And Lady Vere de Vere laughed back, all her aloofness washed away.

  “You’d better go right down and change,” Betsy advised.

  “Oh, there’s no danger from saltwater drenchings!” This was a new acce
nt. Canadian, Betsy suspected. English, Irish, Bostonian, and Canadian, so far!

  “Then won’t you sit down and dry off? My name’s Betsy Ray.”

  “I’m Maida Bartlett from Toronto.”

  “You’re a good sailor. You must have crossed before.”

  “Many times, to England.”

  They began eagerly to talk.

  “I’m going to Europe to study,” Betsy said.

  “Alone? How frightfully jolly! Mother and I are going to Madeira for her health,” Maida replied.

  A junior officer came hurrying up. Mr. Chandler was good-looking, big-shouldered, with thick hair set in glistening waves and large white teeth. He showed his teeth in a wide smile now as he said chidingly, “You young ladies aren’t supposed to be up here. The Captain sent me to fetch you.”

  He took them back, one on each arm, to their deck chairs, and sat down between them.

  Betsy didn’t care much for him, but Maida seemed to like him, and he certainly liked Maida. He waved her hair in his fingers to dry it. He called her a Christmas angel.

  “Maybe you two will come to tea in my cabin. I’ve been saving my Christmas cake, and now I know why.”

  “How frightfully jolly!” Maida cried. Over his head, to Betsy’s surprise, she winked.

  After he left they sat talking about him with bursts of laughter. Betsy confided her admiration for the purser. They had tea, still talking, while Mrs. Sims and Mrs. Cheney looked on benevolently. The waves were growing calmer. And Miss Wilson, when Betsy went down to dress for dinner, was sitting up with her dinner tray on her knees.

  Her plain bed jacket was impeccably neat. Her white hair was smoothly arranged and her eyeglasses perched on a straight, well-formed nose. She watched with interest as Betsy twisted her hair in intricate loops, and put on a peg-top skirt and her best lace blouse which had frills around both neck and wrists. Betsy added bracelets and sprayed perfume on her hair. She directed a spray at Miss Wilson’s bed jacket.

  “Mercy!” Miss Wilson cried, but she looked pleased.

  “Tomorrow night you’ll be coming up. And you’re going to love our table. Mr. O’Farrell is perfectly fascinating. Last night we talked about South Africa. He served there with distinction, and he told about his adventures with an absolute flood of eloquence.”

  “Really?”

  “He and I sat arguing afterward for ages. I sympathize with the Boers, you see. So does my father.”

  “Did he mind?” asked Miss Wilson. “The purser, I mean?”

  “No. He likes to argue. But when we stopped, he said, ‘Faith! Think of discussing such subjects with a woman!’” Betsy tried to imitate the Irish inflection and Miss Wilson laughed.

  He had a way of looking at her, Betsy remembered, his head bent, a cigarette between his fingers, his eyes intent or gaily quizzical. She didn’t try to imitate that.

  Books came up for discussion that night. The rough sea of the day before caused Mr. O’Farrell to mention the storm in Joseph Conrad’s The Nigger of the Narcissus. Betsy had never read it, but Joe Willard had.

  “A friend of mine has told me about that description.”

  The English lady was reading Jean Christophe.

  “My sister considers it simply magnificent,” Betsy contributed.

  Joe had read Ibsen and Julia had read Shaw. Betsy was increasingly grateful for these two inquiring minds. Betsy, too, was a reader, but she read Dickens, Thackeray, and Scott. She read Shakespeare and the poets. Shouldn’t an author know the classics?

  But people at dinner tables, she discovered, didn’t talk about the classics much.

  Fortunately she had one dear love among books that was not a classic. And Mr. O’Farrell mentioned it.

  “The Beloved Vagabond? Why, I’ve read that over and over!” Betsy cried.

  “I’ve read it more than once myself,” said Mr. O’Farrell. “Every seaman has something of the vagabond in him, I suspect. And Paragot was partly Irish.”

  “Do you remember when he decided to go to Budapest, and just went, all of a sudden? That’s the way I like to do things,” Betsy declared.

  The English lady knew Paragot, too. “But I wished he’d cut his nails,” she remarked. “And I didn’t like it when he put his hairbrush in the butter.”

  “Pooh!” said Betsy, smiling so she wouldn’t sound rude, and Mr. O’Farrell proclaimed, “Your attitude, Madame, seems to us effete. But I’m afraid Mr. Glenn agrees with you.”

  “I haven’t read it,” said Mr. Glenn seriously, “I don’t like hairbrushes in butter, though.” Which sent them all into laughter.

  Their table was gayer even than the Captain’s table, although Betsy knew that was supposed to be the smartest. It was really stuffy, according to Maida, who sat there. The lady author, whose name, Betsy had learned, was Mrs. Main-Whittaker, sat next to the Captain. She always dressed for dinner, complete with jewels and feathers. She was smoking. Betsy had never seen a woman smoke before except on a stage.

  “I hope it isn’t necessary to smoke in order to write. Papa and Mamma would never let me,” she thought.

  The evening air was almost balmy. For the first time the decks were more attractive, after dinner, than the lounge. Maida and Betsy stayed out in their chairs and were joined by Mr. Chandler, Mr. Glenn, and a Mr. Burton, middle-aged, with mustaches that drooped to his shoulders.

  That night Betsy changed to a thin night gown—pink silk, trimmed with lace.

  “Well! I look more like it now!” she remarked as she tucked her curlers under a lacy cap before the mirror.

  “More like what?” asked the mystified Miss Wilson.

  “A young lady on a romantic Mediterranean cruise.”

  In the morning she put on her red blazer and a red and green cap. The cap was reversible—red on one side and green on the other and could be poked into jaunty shapes. When she emerged onto the scrubbed glistening deck, she was greeted by golden sunshine, and there was something in the air…

  “It’s summer! It’s the tropics! It’s glorious!” Betsy cried, running to the railing.

  The ocean was sparkling and dancing as though it had never in all its existence caused a ship to lurch and roll. It was like her own prairie on a summer morning, Betsy thought. She could almost smell flowers.

  “Oh, I’m so happy!” she confided to Taylor who was passing. “Honestly, I could tango down the deck!”

  “Yes, Miss, I’m sure you could,” Taylor answered politely. She was thin and rather stiff. Rosa was short, chunky, and cozy. Both of them were nice, but not so glamorous as Celeste.

  Mr. O’Farrell immediately noticed the cap.

  “You look like one of the little people of Ireland,” he said. “All you need is a harp in your hair.”

  This was something else for Tacy! But Tacy not being available, Betsy sought out Maida.

  “Can you imagine your Mr. Chandler saying a thing like that?”

  “He might.”

  “Well, he wouldn’t have a thrilling Irish voice to say it in!”

  Quite as a matter of course today Betsy and Maida joined forces. They roamed over the ship with Betsy’s square box camera. They tried their skill at shuffle-board. Together they called on Miss Wilson who lay in her deck chair, pale and apprehensive, but smiling.

  “She teaches higher algebra,” Betsy told Maida. “But you’d never guess it. She’s a perfect peach.”

  Maida introduced Betsy to her mother who was playing bridge in the lounge. She was a slender, stately lady, very stiff at first, but Betsy was beginning to understand Canadians. Their characteristics had gone into her notebook along with Mrs. Main-Whittaker, Taylor, and Rosa.

  Betsy told Maida about Celeste and Hortense. Maida cried that she wanted a maid, so they created Gabrielle. Betsy revealed that Maida had been Lady Vere de Vere. Exchanging these hilarious confidences, Betsy felt as though she were back in high school.

  She was enchanted when Maida said “frocks” for “dresses,” “boots” for “shoes
.” Maida, on the other hand, teased Betsy about “I guess,” “cute,” and “cunning.”

  “And you call everyone a peach. Why a peach? Why not a pear, or an apple, or a fig?”

  “You’re a perfect fig,” Betsy said experimentally.

  This chaffing was interrupted by visitors—Mr. Glenn, of course, and Mr. Burton. And Mr. Chandler was not the only officer to come to rest in their vicinity.

  “My sister asked me,” Dr. Wilson said at lunch, “whether you and Miss Bartlett held a fire drill down by your chairs. It was a joke,” he explained, “because there are always so many uniforms there.”

  Mr. O’Farrell looked at Betsy. “Ah, she didn’t miss me at all! The flirt!”

  “I did, as a matter of fact,” Betsy replied.

  But although the “fire drill” was held again after lunch, Mr. O’Farrell didn’t put in an appearance. A purser, Betsy had discovered, was a very busy person.

  “Why, oh, why,” she wailed to Maida, “did I have to fall in love with a purser?”

  They went to tea in Mr. Chandler’s cabin; Maida’s mother had given permission. He had a canary with which they made friends. He showed them photographs of his mother and sisters.

  “I wish Mr. O’Farrell would ask us to tea,” Betsy thought. “I’d like to know what his family is like.”

  Maida poured the tea and Betsy cut the Christmas cake—fruit cake and almond cake in layers, over-spread with white icing and ornamented with candles, ribbons, and toy robins. They had a very good time, but Betsy remained loyal to Mr. O’Farrell.

  That night he and Betsy lingered again at the table. They were talking about Betsy’s writing. She told him about the small sales she had made, and how she kept her stories going out to the magazines and how they kept coming back.

  “One story has brought in sixty-one rejection slips!”

  “The deuce it has!” He was looking at her with attention. “I’d never be able to take it.”

  “Oh, I don’t mind!” Betsy replied. “I think how foolish all those editors will feel when I’m famous.”